A Brewery's Human Touch

January 20, 1987

The Japanese have a great deal to teach American companies about the value of involving workers in decision-making, but one American company -- Stroh Brewery, the beer manufacturer -- has a worker lesson of its own to teach, this one about compassion.

When Stroh closed its 71-year-old brewery in Detroit in 1985, it did more than give the 1,200 workers being laid off the usual goodbye speech about vicious pressures in the beer business. To help the workers find new jobs, Stroh hired a consultant and put together a $2 million war chest from its own and government funds. Among other steps, the company turned an empty school into a job-search center and took out advertisements encouraging other Detroit-area companies to hire its ex-employees. The result: Less than 2 years later, all but 13 of the 1,200 displaced brewery workers are working at new jobs.

All this has been good short-term public relations for Stroh. Recently The Wall Street Journal ran a very laudatory story on the brewer's effort. More to the point, the effort has been a good exercise in humanity. The long- term public-relations payoffs of that are enormous.